Ukrainian drones have hit several locations across Moscow, including setting an oil refinery on fire, sending out flames and towering plumes of smoke over the city and forcing the capital’s airports to suspend flights.
The scale of the long-range attack, apparently designed to shut down operations at the key oil refinery in the Kapotno area, caught most Muscovites by surprise in a city that does not typically warn residents with air raid alarms, and prompted panicked messages on social media.
Footage posted on social media showed three plumes of smoke rising from the refinery. The strike was the second in two days on the facility in what the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, then called “a just response to Russian strikes”.
The Ukrainian strikes came as the Ukrainian capital was hit by a major strike of ballistic missiles and drones, in a marked escalation of the air war between Moscow and Kyiv following a warning by the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, of impending “systemic strikes” on Ukraine.
“Air defence forces are continuing to repel a large-scale attack. Several drones managed to reach the [Moscow oil refinery],” said Sergei Sobyanin, Moscow’s mayor, adding that a shopping centre was also damaged. He claimed about 180 drones heading for the capital had been downed.
Sobyanin said emergency crews were working at the site and also reported “damage” to Sadovod shopping centre in the southeastern part of the city. At least seven drones appear to have beaten Russia’s air defences to strike targets in the city.
Traffic was halted on Moscow’s ring road near the refinery, the broadcaster RIA cited the interior ministry as saying, while air traffic at Vnukovo, Sheremetyevo, and Zhukovsky airports was also disrupted.
Footage posted on social media also appeared to show the strike on the top floors of a high rise building in the Zhukovsky district.
An earlier strike on Tuesday was understood to have already halted operations at the refinery, adding to widespread damage to Russian energy facilities and extending a fuel crisis deeper into the country.
Russia, the world’s third-biggest oil producer and a major oil and fuel exporter, is to import fuel by sea this month as it seeks to manage a shortage after extensive Ukrainian drone attacks on its refineries.
In the surrounding Moscow region, a high-rise residential building, an industrial facility and a number of private houses were damaged in the drone attack, the regional governor said. Sheremetyevo airport, Moscow’s busiest, suspended flights and evacuated people, Some sought shelter in the parking area, the airport said.
Russia said its air defence systems had intercepted and destroyed 555 Ukrainian drones over multiple regions overnight. The number actually shot down could not be independently confirmed.
Kyiv came under the second air attack this week as Russia unleashed ballistic missiles on the Ukrainian capital, city officials said, with residents urged to take shelter.
Authorities in the north-eastern Ukrainian city of Sumy said one person was killed in a drone attack. Airstrike alerts were issued for most of Ukraine’s territory.
One person was killed in the Ukrainian city of Enerhodar, where most of the staff of the Russian-held Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant live, said the Russia-installed mayor, Maksim Pukhov. In Russia’s Belgorod border region, officials said a Ukrainian drone strike killed one man in his car.
On Wednesday, Moscow accused Ukraine of attacking a bus carrying Belarusian children, an accusation Kyiv said was false. In the southern Russian region of Rostov, a Ukrainian drone attack killed one person and caused a fire at two commercial facilities, officials said. Russia and Ukraine deny deliberately targeting civilians.
Reuters contributed to this report